


Infinity Is Present In Each Part

by babykid528



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Reapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 13:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2469191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach is a Reaper. He has ferried many people Home after their deaths. Chris is the first person he's ever encountered who has managed to evade death before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infinity Is Present In Each Part

**Author's Note:**

  * For [curvasud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curvasud/gifts).



> [colinmorgan](http://colinmorgan.tumblr.com/) requested: _Pinto, with Grim Reaper!Zach and hapless, has-so-many-near-death-experiences-but-is-still-annoyingly-alive!Chris? And their many encounters?_ \-- This was supposed to be cracky, as you can see, but it turned into serious feels fic.
> 
> Due to the nature of the subject matter (AKA since this is Reaper fic), I feel I need to mention that this is technically death!fic. _HOWEVER_ , the pairing could not have their happy ending without the death, so think of it more as a fairytale about eternal love. <3
> 
> Also, since this is a reaper fic, there are almost-deaths and actually deaths mentioned, though none graphically described. If something specifically is triggering, please let me know so I can add additional warnings for it.
> 
> SUPER SPECIAL THANKS for [jouissants](http://booissants.tumblr.com/) for offering support while I wrote, and for [rabidchild67](http://rabidchild67.tumblr.com/) and my friend I for reading through the first draft of this and providing really helpful feedback.
> 
> **A Sountrack/Fanmix for the fic can now be found [[HERE](http://8tracks.com/mysticbafflingwonder/infinity-is-present-in-each-part)].**

It is only October - early October, at that - but the theatre is filled with the orchestra’s opening strains of Tchaikovsky’s _The Nutcracker Pas de Deux._ It is the first rehearsal for the dancers with the live orchestra. The first of many rehearsals before opening night on Christmas Eve.

It is, unfortunately, also the last rehearsal for their Sugar Plum Fairy, Zoe Saldana.

Zach watches from the wings as Zoe takes to the stage. She bows to her partner, the unimportant, unknown dancer portraying Prince Coqueluche, and he shivers. A quick little tremor of muscle, or what would pass for muscle were Zach human.

Zach is not human though.

_We are just the ferrymen_ , John said to him once. The words echo in his head in some kind of strange melodic counterpoint to the violins.

It’s an accurate assessment of their role. Ferrymen. Zach has read all the human books written about his kind, he was there to see most of them written, actually. He ferried some of the writers away himself.

That existential line of thought comes to a halt as Zoe steps out to dance her solo portion of the scene.

Zach goes perfectly still as she comes to her first pirouette.

He sees it. The wobble. Anyone looking for it would see it. Anyone not looking… Well, she covers it beautifully. All smooth lines and graceful motions.

But on the next pirouette the wobble is more obvious.

And on the third… The third is her undoing.

It seems like such an act of cruelty that this movement that has been second nature to this elegant women since she was just a little girl will be the end of all she has worked so hard for.

Zach watches her ankle give way. He watches as she seems to tumble in slow motion toward the stage. There’s a gasp from someone nearby and a scream as one of the ropes suspended up above, at that exact moment, also gives way.

The crash that follows echoes like an avalanche throughout the enclosed space and everything descends into chaos.

Zach stays where he’s been this whole time: off to the side, but not hidden.

When Zoe emerges from the swirling dust, confusion and loss mixed with an odd expression of peace on her beautiful face, Zach does his best to give her a reassuring smile.

He was meant for this, reaping. His ability to compartmentalize emotion and exude calm is natural but well practiced. He feels like his skills are being put to the test in this moment though.

“This is really it,” she says when she is close enough to him to be heard over the scene behind her.

He nods, somber.

“I didn’t get to opening night after all,” She says it so quietly, he is sure he is not meant to hear it.

“I am sorry,” he tells her.

He means those words. He always says them, but he doesn’t always mean them. With her he does.

She seems to shrug. He can tell the motion startles her because she cannot feel herself do it even though she can see herself move. In time, she’ll get used to that.

“Can I still dance?” she asks, voice urgent suddenly, “Wherever you’re taking me?”

He offers her a small smile, only just tinged with warmth, and he nods.

“You can do whatever you wish.”

She smiles wide at that, eyes brimming with tears, and she reaches out to take his hand.

He gives it to her. A sign of comfort, even though she cannot really feel him against her. No souls can touch, not like humans can, but the gesture is what matters.

She does not look back toward the mangled mess of her body left behind them in the settling dust. Most people Zach ferries would turn back, allow themselves one final moment to cling to the life they have lost, but Zoe doesn’t. She keeps her eyes forward, resolved. Zach feels a little sadder for her because she doesn’t look and he grips her hand tighter, no matter that she cannot feel the difference, as he leads her Home.

\---

“You had a hard one today.”

Zach turns to look at John when he hears his voice.

They are standing at the edge of solid land, looking out across the expanse of swirling light and air. The Quarry. Where the light of a billion years – past, present, and still to come – swirls in a kaleidoscope of colors, already seen or being seen or waiting to be seen by the humans in their plane of existence.

The vision of a billion sunrises and sunsets are forever burned into Zach’s mind. Or what passes for his mind.

Reapers are not people, but Zach looks human. Just as John looks human. It is the last, ultimate comfort that they appear in a familiar form when they ferry their passengers Home.

That they remain in that form even when Home is a force of habit. It’s not like their job has set hours. People die when they die. It’s easier to go to where they’re needed without the hassle of having to change first.

“It was harder than usual, yes,” Zach says carefully.

John comes close and stands beside him, shoulders almost brushing.

Zach has lived his entire existence not feeling another being’s touch, but he knows what it should feel like, and that makes the gesture seem real enough. He appreciates it for what it is and leans in a little closer to John in response.

“She had a bright future,” John says.

Zach shakes his head.

“She did, but that isn’t why…” he stops and takes a moment before continuing, “They all have futures, a lot of them bright. She had such grace to her though.”

He looks out at the color and light before them again.

When Zach was much younger, Alice, their fellow Reaper, once said, in a disapproving tone, that Zach was far too invested in beauty. Like he should be ashamed.

Before Zach could explain himself to her, John told her that where she saw beauty as shallowness, Zach saw infinite depth. John told her it was their loss that they were not so far seeing as Zach.

John and Zach have been close ever since. Friends. Or as close to the human concept as Reapers can get.

John sighs, looking across the Quarry himself, and Zach glances at him.

“Well,” John says, “Zoe got to bring that grace with her at least.”

Zach sighs too.

“Yeah, I suppose she did,” he agrees, but he still doesn’t feel quite right about it.

\---

His next assignment comes quickly. Or it seems to come quickly.

Zoe has barely had time to get her legs beneath her at Home. Zach has barely had time to parse his reactions to her passing in his meditative reflection. But death comes when it wishes.

Zach is out in the human world again, waiting in the open and watching for his next assigned passenger.

He consults his assignment book, standing in the streets of Los Angeles.

He is invisible, but people still move around him, not through him. If he could be seen, he would look like a lost tourist consulting a guidebook.

His next assigned passenger is named Chris Pine. He’s a California boy, born and raised. An aspiring actor, young for a human, at only twenty-six.

_Zoe was just a little older than that._

Zach shakes his head, physically trying to clear it.

His assignment says that Chris is working as a barista while trying to make it as an actor. He lives with a friend in a small, two-bedroom apartment right across the street, and he is hit by a car on his way to work in a few minutes as he blearily crosses the road.

Zach moves to the corner, near Chris’ apartment building’s entrance, right beside where he knows the crash will occur, and waits.

The sun is low on the horizon, just rising for the day. It reminds Zach of the Quarry and John. And that reminds him again of Zoe.

His head is so full of his last assignment that he almost misses Chris entirely when he brushes past him to wait at the crosswalk.

And wouldn’t that just have been a shame.

Reapers are naturally drawn to their assigned passenger. It helps them locate the soon-to-be-deceased. It makes ferrying them easier when they know, instinctively, where they can be found.

Even if he wasn’t drawn to Chris, though, Zach would still be able to pick him out of a crowd.

If Zoe was poise and grace, then Chris is sunshine embodied.

Zach does not know what to make of the tension that seems to grip him deep inside, beneath his projected human chest, upon seeing his assigned passenger for the first time.

Chris stands before Zach, waiting for the traffic light to change, clearly exhausted, and lost in his sleepy thoughts.

And then Chris smiles.

A full-blown smile, followed by a laugh that is like a blinding burst of brightness, all because the older woman beside him is saying something Zach cannot hear.

It takes Zach a moment to realize that she should not be here.

Chris should not be conversing with that woman.

And in that quick moment, the one in which Chris has paused to speak with her, waking up a little more fully as he continues to laugh, the car that should have hit him speeds on by.

Zach blinks, full of disbelief. A disbelief that manages to eclipse Chris’ bright light.

And then Zach suddenly feels a sharp pull beneath his navel and when he blinks again he’s back Home.

“What?” he says aloud as he tries to get his bearings.

The pages in his assignment book, the ones lined with Chris Pine’s name and information, disintegrate right before his eyes.

“What is happening?” he asks, louder. Looking around frantically for an answer.

None comes.

He goes in search of John, but he is out on assignment.

Alice is the first Reaper he finds.

“Zachary,” she says civilly.

“Alice,” he greets in turn, with a quick nod of his head, “I have a question.”

She tilts her head, projecting her surprise at him loud and clear, before welcoming him to ask it.

“What does it mean when an assignment disintegrates?”

She blinks at him and actually smiles. It’s the smile they learn for the benefit of their passengers and the condescension thinly veiled beneath it grates on Zach’s already shaken nerves.

“You mean you’ve never had an assigned passenger manage to dodge their death before?” she asks.

She makes him feel like a child.

“No,” he answers, bewildered.

Some of her superiority bleeds away at his honesty.

Her next words are more genuinely kind.

“Sometimes,” she says, “people escape death. For now.”

“But how?” he asks.

Fate is a word that humans throw around, a word they throw around to comfort themselves in the wake of loss and disappointment. It’s not a word they have at Home, but it’s not far off from the concepts Zach has learned from birth.

“Paths can be changed sometimes,” Alice explains, all veiled animosity gone now.

Those words stay with Zach. They stay with him for his next five assignments, all of which end according to plan. They stay with him and they nag at the very core of him until he meets Chris again.

\---

He’s in LA again, but Chris is older than he was last time. Twenty-eight, according to Zach’s book.

He’s no longer a barista, no longer living in the apartment with the roommate, no longer in that same area of LA that he was just two years before. He has a house now, a spot as a regular on a Soap Opera, and he’s about to drown in his own pool, completely alone.

Zach finds himself in Chris’ house when he lands on the human plane. He can see through the open back door that Chris is in the yard, barbequing something for dinner. He has the radio on, and the sun is setting this time, but he’s just as brilliantly glowing as the first time Zach saw him.

The radio is playing something mellow, easily sung, and Chris is singing along quietly as he shakes some asparagus in the vegetable tray on his state of the art grill. There’s a steak sizzling beside the vegetables, and a sauce simmering in a pot on the small, attached stovetop.

Zach is surprised to find himself, for the first time, envious of Chris’ sense of smell.

In a few moments, Chris will step away from the grill. He will go into the house to look for the tongs he thought he forgot, but which are actually hanging from the handle of the grill. When he comes back out of the house, he will trip over the edge of his favorite deck chair and he will tumble. He will hit his head hard on the coping around his pool, and he will black out before rolling into the pool water. It will be a few minutes before he actually drowns.

Zach waits, like always, but he watches more carefully this time.

He takes in Chris’ features more fully. He notes the freckles on the side of his neck, the way his cheeks pink as he smiles and sings a line of the song he must particularly enjoy. He sees the way Chris’ hair fights to curl at the ends from the apparent humidity of the evening and the steam and smoke coming off the grill. He watches the way the muscles in Chris’ hands and arms flex as he cooks.

Zach wishes, not for the first time, that he could change Chris’ path, erase this assignment.

He remembers Zoe again. Zoe who has acclimated to Home in the quickest and most complete ways possible. Zoe, who could become a rare human-turned-Reaper if she keeps impressing the Powers the way she has been.

He couldn’t erase Zoe’s assignment and he had certainly wanted to.

But Zoe happened before Chris taught him things can be changed. That the human concept of fate is not immutable.

Chris already escaped once. Once is a possibility, apparently. A second escape, now that just can’t be possible.

Zach’s aborted hope is still hanging in the air when Chris begins to search for the tongs. He steps away from the grill and goes to head into the house.

It’s only a matter of minutes now, Zach knows. Soon, Chris will come Home.

Chris turns back around before he reaches the door, though, smacking himself on the head exactly where he would have hit it against the stone on his fall. He declares himself an idiot to his empty backyard as he approaches the tongs where they hang on the grill.

Zach is gaping as the same pull from last time yanks at his gut and he finds himself Home again, pages turned to ash.

Chris managed to escape a second time, just as Zach hoped he would, just as Zach never thought he could.

As shocking as this turn of events is, it is not what really surprises Zach. What surprises Zach is how twisted up he feels inside to have left Chris behind.

\---

“You returned without him again,” Alice says, standing in the open doorway to Zach’s hovel, John right behind her.

The animosity that once was a permanent fixture between Alice and the two male Reapers has been absent since Zach went to her after the first time he met Chris.

“I did,” Zach confirms.

Alice and John take that as invitation and enter.

“I thought you would be at the Quarry,” John says.

Zach shakes his head, staring at his hands folded in his lap. He doesn’t have the words to explain the light he saw in Chris, the light he’s left behind again, the light that has driven him to distraction. Even if he had the words, he certainly could not share something like that, not even with John.

“He won’t evade death forever,” Alice says.

Zach nods. Those words are a comfort, but also a source of something like anxiety. He can’t share that either though, so he sits quietly. His friends do the same.

\---

Zach is on an assignment to retrieve an old man who passes away peacefully in his sleep. When he returns, John is waiting for him.

“While you were gone,” he says, “I received an assignment for Chris Pine.”

If Zach actually breathed, his breath would stutter.

There is an unwritten rule, an understanding amongst Reapers, that assigned passengers and the Reapers who retrieve them are linked. That there is some kind of predetermination that matches the person who needs ferrying with the Reaper best matched to offer them the comfort they need in the end.

Once Zach learned that it was possible that assigned passengers could escape death, he had assumed he would always be called whenever Chris was ready to be brought Home. After Chris’ second evasion, he knew in his core that he would be called to him again at some point.

John should never have been called to Chris. Zach should never have been on another assignment when Chris’ time came again.

“You brought him Home,” Zach says, looking past John’s shoulder, unable to look at him directly. He cannot keep the disappointment from tingeing his voice.

John just shakes his head.

“No?” Zach asks.

“No,” John says.

And that one word is full of books worth of unspoken words.

Zach meets John’s gaze then and there is a softness to John’s features that Zach has never seen before. A softness and an understanding.

Zach has to look away again and take a moment.

“What happened?” he finally asks.

“He was hiking up north with friends,” John tells him, “ he was supposed to be caught in a bad snowstorm near the peak of the mountain. It was September there and the forecast was not predicting snow, but it’s always a possibility that time of year. His friend cut his leg on a rock though and Chris thought it was too deep for just their first aid kit. They went to the Ranger’s station to get the aid they needed and weathered out the storm in the warmth. He lived again.”

Zach shakes his head.

“He lived again,” he repeats the words, no small measure of wonder wrapped within them.

\---

When Chris’ name next shows up in Zach’s book, he knows he will be coming Home alone again before he even gets the full details of the assignment.

Chris is thirty-three, turning thirty-four. He’s planning his joint birthday party with his best friend and his best friend’s fiancée at their apartment. They’ve been drinking and laughing for hours. The friend and fiancée are getting flirty and Chris wants to give them some privacy. They tell him he’s welcome to stay in the guest room, but he swears he’s okay to drive. They shouldn’t let him leave, but they do, and Zach is curious to find himself feeling angry at them as the door closes behind Chris.

Zach follows him into the elevator and he watches Chris as they descend together toward the building’s lobby. Chris is uncharacteristically quiet. He has always seemed bright and full of noise, singing or laughing even when alone. He is subdued now though, playing with his car keys. Zach is confused at how small he seems.

They exit the elevator together and Zach follows as Chris approaches his car. He fumbles his keys as he tries to unlock it and when he squats down to retrieve them from where they fell, he doesn’t get up again right away.

“No, not today,” Zach hears Chris mumble, voice slightly slurred.

“Chris,” Zach sighs his name before he knows what he is doing.

“Not today,” Chris says, louder.

For a moment, Zach thinks he is responding to him. But that isn’t even possible.

Zach is expecting the strange tug Home when Chris takes out his phone and asks the computer to find him a cab company. He’s expecting the disintegrating assignment pages. He’s even expecting the feeling of loss at suddenly being away from Chris.

He really doesn’t know what to make of the fact that he’s used to that feeling now.

\---

“When is the last time you were at the Quarry?”

John’s voice at his door surprises Zach.

“John?” he asks, welcoming him into his hovel without getting up from the chair he is seated in.

“The Quarry, Zach,” John says, “When were you last there?”

Zach gives him a funny look and tilts his head, seriously considering the question.

“When you ferried Zoe,” John supplies his own answer.

Zach blinks at him.

“That sounds accurate,” he admits.

John nods.

“Why do you ask?” Zach wonders when John says nothing further.

“That was before you were assigned to ferry Chris the first time,” John says, as if that is some kind of answer.

“I suppose it was,” Zach says, bristling a little at whatever accusation John might be making.

John raises his hands in a placating gesture and Zach forces himself to settle back in his chair.

“What are you trying to say to me, John?” Zach asks.

“It just seemed curious…” he begins, but stops and switches paths, “It has always been your favorite place… And then I saw him for myself…”

Zach narrows his eyes and stands.

“What does that mean?” he asks.

John shakes his head and moves back toward the door.

“If you want to talk, you know where to find me,” he says, and then he leaves.

Zach has no idea what he could want to talk to John about, though John certainly thinks there is something that needs discussing. Something Zach hasn’t noticed yet that he needs to figure out on his own.

He thinks about John’s words for a long time.

Zach is no closer to understanding what John meant when he leaves on his next assignment, or the one after it, or the one after that.

\---

Chris is different when Zach sees him again. He is not somber like he was the last time he was assigned to Zach. He is downright radiant, actually.

Once again, Zach finds himself in the wings of a theatre, watching his assigned passenger take to the stage. Chris is thirty-five now, just barely. He’s starring in his first Broadway production of a play Zach read once but can’t remember the title of. Chris is in full costume, the first dress rehearsal fully underway, and Zach cannot look away.

Chris is saying something, in character, to other characters on stage. He is smiling and his light is glowing full force.

Zach looks out to the house and notes the director and choreographer watching, enraptured, from their mid-center seats.

And then Chris begins singing.

Zach has heard him sing before. The quiet kind of singing a person does when they are enjoying their solitude, but unwilling to break the quiet too wide open.

This is different.

This is Chris projecting his voice out across a room full of seats. Even with the help of a microphone, Zach can feel the sheer power behind it. The way Chris carefully enunciates the consonants and vowels, words clearly ringing through in the rich timbre of his full tenor. The sound of it, combined with the orchestra, creates bursts of rich colored light, swirling across the stage, engulfing Chris in jewel tones, and Zach cannot believe he is the only one who can see this right now.

And he’s here to watch that light die out.

He’s here to bring the echo of that light Home.

In mere moments, Chris will suffer the same end Zoe did. He will fall, he will be crushed by some faulty equipment, and he will never see opening night of his Broadway debut.

Zach can’t even bear the thought of it a moment longer.

He takes a step forward, out of the shadows and into the stage lighting, thankful that no one can see him.

But Chris falters then, glancing unseeing past the spot where Zach is rooted, and he calls for everyone to hold on, apologizing, while announcing he needs to take it from the top again.

There’s the usual grumble of stagehands, actors, directors, and musicians all in various states of annoyance at having their inertia stopped and rewound. But Chris just moves back to his mark for the opening of the scene and glances at where Zach is standing again, and smiles.

When the rigging holding up the lights gives way, Chris is on the other side of the stage, unharmed.

Zach doesn’t flinch when he is yanked back Home. He doesn’t even stop to watch the pages turn to ash. He takes off as soon as his feet hit familiar ground and makes his way to John’s hovel.

\---

John asks no questions, just welcomes Zach into his space as soon as he arrives.

“I saw him again,” Zach says, breaking the silence.

John tilts his head, not needing clarification about who Zach is talking about.

“The Quarry…” Zach tries to begin. “Chris…”

John nods, equal parts understanding and encouragement.

Zach rubs at his face, like he has seen so many humans do. Without the scrubbing friction, it seems to lack the measure of comfort Zach has seen it provide. Still, it gives him something to do in the silent space that has followed his aborted sentences, the space he cannot find the words to fill.

“I don’t understand,” he says finally.

“You do,” John assures him, moving to stand close by. It’s the only reassurance John has ever known to give and Zach is both thankful for it and frustrated further by it.

“I don’t!” He exclaims, anger bubbling over. “I don’t understand any of it!”

John says nothing.

“He lit up like the Quarry,” Zach explains, helpless.

John nods.

“I don’t understand what it means,” Zach says, angry again.

John sighs.

“You haven’t been to the Quarry since before Chris,” he says, seemingly taking pity on Zach. “You haven’t needed it.”

\---

Zach doesn’t remember leaving John’s hovel, he doesn’t remember moving even an inch. All he knows is he somehow finds himself standing at the Quarry, eyes filled with the dazzling color and light he has always visited in his free time since the very beginning of his existence. It is his favorite place, his place of reflection and calm joy.

Only, he hasn’t been here in a long time. Not since Chris.

And the kaleidoscope of color and light seems somehow less magnificent now that he has been away for so long.

Now that he knows just how bright color and light can be.

He falls into a crouch, at the edge of solid ground, and pulls his chin close to his chest, taking deep breaths.

“It’s not quite the same anymore, is it?”

He looks up and sees John’s knees a few feet away.

Zach has ferried hundreds of thousands of people across from Life to Home. He has accompanied a truly staggering number of passengers throughout his existence. He has seen every way in which a person can die, at least twice, and he has seen the faces of family and friends when their loved ones are lost or about to be lost.

He knows what humans call love. He knows the way in which humans come to depend on one another, to enmesh their lives together, in a mutually needy kind of way that is both beautiful and painful and somehow necessary to so many of their species. He knows what losing that love does to them, the way it breaks them, and makes them in need of mending, of healing. He knows about all this. He just never expected he could feel anything like it himself.

Zach looks up, hopeless, face full of pleading in his continued crouch. John’s gaze meets his and John’s hand is offered in support.

“I know,” he tells Zach, voice gentle.

This is what John was waiting for. This is what John knew Zach needed to figure out. This is what John meant Zach could turn to him for.

“Love?” Zach asks.

John presses his mouth into a thin line.

“How?” Zach asks.

John sighs.

“There isn’t really a way to explain it,” he says.

“How did you know?” Zach asks.

John struggles with how he should answer, before finally saying, voice full of sorrow, “I have seen it before.”

\---

Chris is thirty-seven when he becomes an assigned passenger for the sixth time in his life.

And as sure as Zach was that he would be coming Home without Chris the last time, he is just as sure he will not come Home alone again.

Chris is at a small convenience store, getting a bottle of water and something to eat, before he heads home for the day. He takes his time, trying to decide if he wants a sandwich, since he’s going to be eating dinner late that evening at his sister’s, or if he just wants the box of cookies he knows will negate all of the calories he just burned in the three hours of basketball he just played with his friends.

It’s the hesitation that kills him in the end.

Zach stands off to the side of the cash register, stoic but aching, unable to do anything to change the coming course of events.

He watches as a girl enters the store, mere minutes behind Chris. He watches as she walks up to the counter, uneasy on her feet, and points a handgun at the storeowner. She is too small to really look comfortable holding it, but she’s strung out, and desperate for cash. The owner doesn’t have much security beyond fake cameras and a gun he took home to clean but neglected to bring back to the store with him that morning. He has no choice but to do what she tells him to do, and hope that no one gets hurt.

Chris is not the only customer in the store when this plays out. There is a mom and her young son one aisle over from him.

And that is why Zach knows that his assigned passenger will finally need ferrying once and for all.

Chris is the hero-type.

The scuffle that follows is predictable in its execution and outcome. Chris takes the girl down and saves everyone in the store, except himself.

All of the almost-ends that Chris narrowly escaped before now suddenly feel unworthy of him. Anything short of this ending would have been insulting to who he is, to the light he has always brought to everything he does.

That knowledge, though, doesn’t make it any easier for Zach to watch that light fade out of him as Chris’ blood spills across the floor.

The knowledge certainly doesn’t make it any easier to come face-to-face with Chris, a Chris that can see him, for the first time.

Zach’s body is an illusion. As a Reaper he does not breathe, or sleep, or blink. He certainly does not cry. But he knows, even though he cannot see his own reflection, that his eyes are brimming with tears, just like Chris’ eyes.

“You came for me,” Chris says.

They’re the first words Chris has ever said to Zach. Zach wishes with everything he has that they were anything else.

“I did,” he says, barely above a whisper.

He has trained all of his existence for one thing. He serves one purpose. Provide comfort. Bring people Home.

He’s doing a bang up job of it right now.

“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly, voice choked.

He has never meant those words more.

Tears spill down Chris’ cheeks when he nods.

The squeal of the approaching ambulance combined with the screams and cries of the shop owner and his other customers breaks into their reverie. Chris goes to look at his body, but Zach reaches out as if to stop him.

“Don’t,” he says.

Chris looks at him, really searches his face, before nodding his assent.

“What happens now?” he asks.

Zach swallows past a lump that has formed in his throat.

“Now,” he explains, “I take you Home.”

“Home,” Chris echoes the word, like it is not one he is familiar with.

Zach offers his hand, surprised to see it tremble.

When Chris takes hold of it, he can almost feel the contact. It startles a gasp out of him, one that Chris seems fascinated by. And then they are off, leaving Chris’ body behind for a place that suddenly seems much too far away.

\---

The Quarry hangs bright before him. Zach sits perched on the edge of solid land, feet dangling, hands clutched together in his lap.

Nothing seems right any more.

It has been some time since Zach returned with Chris in tow.

He has had three assignments since, all according to plan.

And he has not seen Chris.

Zach suddenly envies the humans and their ways to mark time. He has never needed or wanted to delineate his life before. Now he is desperate for some inkling of an explanation for how long it has been. When did he last see Chris?

He never knew until it was gone how much he looked forward to the eventuality that he would see Chris and his light again. Some time in the future. Even if the time was never set or known.

Knowing there’s no more assignments with Chris’ name. Knowing Chris is no longer a part of that human world…

Zach feels that loss. He feels it all too keenly.

If the Quarry looked dull before, in the wake of Chris’ brightness, it looks absolutely shadowed right now.

“Alice said you come here.”

If Zach was able to get whiplash, in this instance, he would. He turns so immediately at the sound of Chris’ voice.

“Chris,” he replies, helpless and hopeless and completely mystified over what else to say.

“Zach, right?” Chris asks.

Zach nods.

“It seems pretty absurd that I need to even ask that,” Chris says, stepping closer, “Seeing as you’ve known my name for such a long time now.”

Zach can see now that Chris knows. He knows the number of times he was supposed to die. He knows the number of times Zach came for him. He knows the number of times Zach left, empty-handed.

Chris sits beside him, not waiting for an invitation, and he grips tightly to the edge of the ground.

“This is beautiful,” he says.

Zach nods before admitting, “It used to be.”

Chris looks incredulous.

“It’s pretty obviously stunning,” he says.

“I’ve seen something more splendid,” Zach confesses.

He doesn’t want to turn his head, but he knows Chris is looking at him, so he gives in and returns the gaze.

“Something more splendid,” Chris echoes the words.

Zach is thankful he cannot blush.

“Something miraculous,” He says.

He watches Chris swallow and he knows that, somehow, Chris can see right through him.

“Well,” Chris says, voice full of some kind of suppressed emotion Zach can’t quite identify. “I guess then, I’ll just have to appreciate the view enough for the both of us.”

When Zach looks at him, Chris is smiling. The current smile is pale in comparison to previous smiles Zach has seen from him, but it still manages to burst with light and brighten something in Zach’s eye. Something that makes even the Quarry glow a little more significantly.

Zach can feel himself smiling in return and Chris’ smile widens further. It widens until it’s splitting his face and Chris is fully beaming. His laughter, like music, floats through and around them.

Zach reaches out, without even thinking, and presses his palm over the back of Chris’ hand where it is still gripping the ground.

Chris stops laughing and looks at their hands, overlapping but not really feeling. Zach thinks he’ll pull away, scared of the still new loss of touch, but he doesn’t. Instead, Chris turns his hand beneath Zach’s and laces their fingers together.

Chris closes his eyes then, takes a deep breath, and releases it slowly into the wide-open air before them. Zach follows suit, squeezing Chris’ hand just slightly as he loses himself in the thought of what it could feel like.

The grief he felt before Chris sat down melts away then. A warmth seeps in, replacing it. With eyes closed, Zach can imagine the warmth is an extension of Chris’ light, a light he’s gifted to Zach, that he’s allowed Zach to hold onto for him. Zach clings to that idea and relishes the way he can almost feel Chris’ hand tighten around his.

When he opens his eyes again he isn’t even a little surprised to find that the Quarry looks absolutely brilliant.


End file.
